About the author

Donn Risolo has been a soccer writer, editor and publicist since 1973. His new book, “Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats,” was released recently by the University of Nebraska Press.

"From conspiracy to controversy, this is a unique look at famous and not-so-famous incidents from world soccer. There's something here for all who love the game."

-- JP Dellacamera
World Cup and Olympic soccer commentator

"Risolo's Soccer Stories is precisely what it promises to be .... The author delivers it all in conversational, enthusiastic, and readable prose."

-- Benjamin D. Lisle
Journal of Sport History

"Fans will get a kick out of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats. Read about highlights in soccer history from around the world, including Brazilian players paid in cattle, an African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game, and more."

The U.S. National Men’s and Women’s teams will have a new look when they play their next domestic matches in late May. For the first time since Nike took over as the USA’s uniform supplier, both teams will feature the same design and concept. In this case, the jersey will feature horizontal red and white stripes with a blue crew neck collar; the shorts are solid blue and the socks white with a blue band at the top. The men will debut their uniforms May 26 when they play host to Scotland in a friendly at EverBank Field in Jacksonville, FL. The women will sport the new look the following day in a friendly against China at PPL Park in Chester, PA. [April 16]

Comment: For Nike, which has been getting it wrong for so long, perhaps the tinkering can end for the next 10 or 15 years. he U.S. jersey has always cried out for horizontal red and white stripes. Given the most prominent feature of our flag, what could be more distinctively American? The closest the team has ever come to that, however, was at the 1994 World Cup, when adidas, the supplier at the time, gave the team vertical red and white stripes. (The shorts, in a weird nod to Levi Strauss, were denim blue.) Worse, the jersey stripes were wavy, as if adidas didn’t want the U.S. National Team to be confused with Chivas Guadalajara or the Paraguayan National Team. (Paraguay failed to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, and neither, for obvious reasons, did Chivas). American soccer apparently has had an aversion to horizontal red and white stripes–call them hoops– since January 1992 with the introduction of the World Cup USA ’94 mascot, a Warner Brothers’ creation called Striker, the World Cup Pup. Striker was probably the most easily forgotten feature of the World Cup once the tournament began, but at the time, his first appearance was attacked, chiefly by Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner, because of the horizontal stripes on his jersey. Typically American, wrote Gardner: Given a World Cup, their mascot trots out wearing a rugby jersey.

Some, but not many, pointed out that such storied sides as Glasgow Celtic and Queens Park Rangers–Brits like Gardner–have proudly worn horizontal stripes for decades. Didn’t matter at the time. The first-time hosts were desperate to be politically soccer correct, and so Striker’s design was quickly altered, giving him red sleeves and a white trunk–no stripes at all. A silly over-reaction.

Nearly two decades later, it is hoped that the U.S. can take the field May 26 in red and white hoops and no one will mistake them for ruggers. Given time, and a few victories, they’ll be unmistakably Americans.